ts, silence, and opportunity for thought, seats
herself upon a garden chair, and gives herself up a willing prey to
melancholy. She had desired to struggle against this evil, but it had
conquered her, and tears rising beneath her lids are falling on her
cheeks, when two small creatures emerging from the summer house on her
left catch sight of her.

They had been preparing for a rush, a real Redshank, painted and
feathered, descent upon her, when something in her sorrowful attitude
becomes known to them.

Fun dies within their kind little hearts. Their Joyce has come home to
them--that is a matter for joy, but their Joyce has come home
unhappy--that is a matter for grief. Step by step, hand in hand, they
approach her, and even at the very last, with their little breasts
overflowing with the delight of getting her back, it is with a very
gentle precipitation that they throw themselves upon her.

And it never occurs to them, either, to trouble her for an explanation;
no probing questions issue from their lips. She is sorry, that is all.
It is enough for their sympathies. Too much.

Joyce herself is hardly aware of the advent of the little comforters,
until two small arms steal around her neck, and she finds Mabel's face
pressed close against her own.

"Let me kiss her, too," says Tommy, trying to push his sister away, and
resenting openly the fact of her having secured the first attempt at
consolation.

"You mustn't tease her, she's sorry. She's very sorry about something,"
says Mabel, turning up Joyce's face with her pink palm. "Aren't you,
Joyce? There's droppies in your eyes?"

"A little, darling," says Joyce, brokenly.

"Then I'll be sorry with you," says the child, with all childhood's
divine intuition that to sorrow alone is to know a double sorrow. She
hugs Joyce more closely with her tender arms, and Joyce, after a battle
with her braver self, gives way, and breaks into bitter tears.

"There now! you've made her cry right out! You're a naughty girl," says
Tommy, to his sister in a raging tone, meant to hide the fact that he
too, himself is on the point of giving way; in fact, another moment sees
him dissolved in tears.

"Never mind, Joycie. Never mind. We love you!" sobs he, getting up on
the back of the seat behind her, and making a very excellent attempt at
strangulation.

"Do you? There doesn't seem to be any one else, then, but you!" says
poor Joyce, dropping Mabel into her lap, and Tommy more to